Transcendence (4 page)

Griffon stares up at the sky and looks like he’s thinking hard. “There’s no way you met the queen, so that must be the lie.”

“Nope. I met the Queen of Greece at the symphony last year.”

“I thought you said
the
queen.”

“She is
the
queen. Of Greece. Deposed, but still. You have two more guesses.”

“You can’t ride a bike?”

“Of course I can ride a bike. Almost everyone can ride a bike. That was the lie.” I pause, not knowing how far I can push him. “You’re really not very good at this, are you?”

He smiles, and I know he’s not annoyed. “So you’re trying to tell me you really were switched at birth?”

“My mom says it was only for an hour and then the hospital figured it out. Sometimes I wonder, though. Kat and I … we’re not all that much alike.” Understatement of the year. She’s the very definition of the gorgeous blond California girl. And I’m … not.

Griffon nods and flashes a dimple. “Too bad for her.”

His direct gaze gives me another kind of fluttering inside. I bite my lip and look down at the ground as we walk. Maybe he has a thing for short, brown-haired girls who don’t wear anything that requires a trip to the dry cleaner.

“I bow to the master,” he says, holding the door of the café open for me. “I think you won that round. Not even close enough for me to contest.”

“Just beginner’s luck.”

Griffon leads me to an empty wooden table by the window. “I’m going to get some tea. Sit here, stare at the tourists, and I’ll be right back.”

The café is crowded with families, and the noise echoes off the walls of the big brick building. I can’t help watching Griffon as he walks up to the counter. Where his dad is totally what you’d expect from a guard at the Tower of London—short bristly hair, white skin, and pink cheeks—Griffon is completely different. He has light brown skin and broad shoulders that dip down into a narrow waist, and his light brown curls have tiny blond streaks in them that I can tell come from the sun, not a bottle. A heavy black cord hangs around his neck, but it’s tucked into his shirt, so I can’t see what’s on the end of it.

Griffon is insanely good-looking, but it’s more than that. As much as I make fun of romance novels and chick flicks, I feel a
tug of recognition down deep that is almost physical, and it frightens me. While my eyes are on him, he turns to lean against the counter as he waits for the tray. I look down, but probably not fast enough. I’m still examining the wooden tabletop when he comes back with the tea.

“I don’t know how you take it, so I brought milk, sugar, lemon, and honey,” he says, setting the tray on the table.

I look over the assortment of jars and packets. “I suppose it’s wrong to say all of it?” I ask, hoping I sound more confident than I feel.

Griffon grins, and my heart races. “Well, you’re allowed to do anything you want. Generally it’s either milk and sugar or lemon and honey.”

“I guess milk and sugar, then,” I say.

“And this is clotted cream,” he says, putting a jar of lumpy white stuff in front of me. “I highly recommend the cream with jam on those scones. Better than any whipped cream back in the States.”

I tentatively poke the pale mass with my knife. “Maybe just some jam,” I say, taking a scone from the plate.

“I insist.” He grabs my scone and smears it with the white cream and jam before putting it back on my plate. His hands are strong and smooth, and I find myself staring at them as he prepares the food. “You’re not one of those girls who doesn’t eat, are you?”

“No,” I say, offended that he would even think that. “I eat plenty. It’s just that I don’t usually eat things that start with the word ‘clotted.’” I take a bite, and it’s as good and rich as he
promised, like thick whipped cream without too much sugar. So much for not being able to eat; I devour half of it before coming up for air. I try to regain some sort of dignity by sipping the tea, wondering if English people really drink it with their pinky out like they do on that PBS show Mom likes. Griffon just sits with his arms folded, watching me, so he’s no help.

I put the cup down on the table after a sip of the watery tea, realizing through my swirling thoughts that neither of us has said a word in the past several minutes.

“Sorry about Kat,” I say. “And all of her questions. She’s not much for history, but she loves a good ghost story.”

“Most people do,” he says. “I get asked things like that all the time.”

“But you don’t, right?” I ask. “Believe in them, I mean.”

“No. Not ghosts. Although other people claim to see them here. Maybe the ghosts know I don’t believe in them and don’t bother showing up,” he says.

“What about all of the people who died such violent deaths right here in the Tower? You don’t think there’s some sort of leftover energy floating around? Some sort of spirit activity trying to right the wrongs that were done to them?” I can’t believe I’m asking that, but there has to be some sort of rational explanation for what just happened out there. At this point, ghosts are the most rational thing I can think of.

“No,” he says, looking at me strangely, stalling for just a beat too long. “I don’t.”

I’m a little disappointed in his finality. Restless spirits are a much friendlier explanation than the fact that I might be losing it.
Except I don’t
feel
crazy. If it wasn’t for unexpected Latin translations and visions of beheadings, I’d be just fine.

“I just realized,” he says, sitting forward in his seat, “that we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Griffon Hall.”

“I know. Owen said.”

He looks at me. “And you are?”

“Oh!” I say. Of course. What an idiot. “Cole Ryan. Nicole really, but only my mother calls me that. It’s Cole to everyone else.”

“Cole,” he repeats. “That’s nice. I’m guessing you’re not from around here.”

“No,” I say. “My dad’s on a business trip and brought us along. We live in San Francisco.”

Griffon nods slowly. He must meet people from all over the world here.

“Have you ever been there?”

“San Francisco?” he asks. “A few times. Where do you live in the city?”

“Upper Haight. Just at the panhandle before Golden Gate Park.”

“Is there still a Ben & Jerry’s there?”

I smile. “Right around the corner from our house.”

Griffon holds my gaze for a split second, then looks around at all of the other people in the café. “Are you enjoying your trip so far?”

I search for something interesting to say. Pretty soon he’s going to notice that I’ve got the conversational skills of a first-semester foreign exchange student. “It’s been great.”

“What else have you done?”

I open my mouth to tell him about the master class I took with the London Symphony Orchestra and how I got to sit backstage at
the concert earlier in the week, about meeting some of the cellists I’d been worshiping for years and having the chance to play privately with them. But Griffon doesn’t know me as the cello prodigy. He only knows the awkward girl who talks about ghosts and falls into total strangers, and suddenly I wanted to keep it that way. “You know, the usual stuff,” I finally say. “Buckingham Palace, the Tate Gallery, museums.”

“How about the Eye?” He nods his head across the river toward the towering Ferris wheel.

Right. The only way I’d get into a small glass box suspended hundreds of feet in the air for half an hour is at gunpoint. And maybe not even then. “Um, no. Not yet.”

“I usually hate tourist things like that, but it has the best view in the city.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I say, knowing it’ll never happen. “It feels like we don’t have enough time to do it all, but it’s been great so far. I’ve always been fascinated by this city. By all of England.”

“Tell me you didn’t get up in the middle of the night to watch the royal wedding.”

“I didn’t,” I answer honestly. Kat had recorded it. “It’s just that I love history, and I really wanted to see the places I’ve read about.” I’m tempted to tell him about the vision, about the girl on the scaffold. Something about the way he looks at me makes me feel safe and grounded. Like I can say anything and he’ll believe me. “In some ways, London feels like home. It’s almost like everything is familiar. Except it’s not.”

Griffon’s eyes scan my face intently. “Like déjà vu?”

“Exactly,” I say. “It’s weird. I’ll be walking by a house and all
of a sudden I’ll feel homesick. Or I’ll know exactly what the next street looks like even though I’ve never been on it.”

He nods, listening to me intently. “It’s weird feeling that you’ve been someplace before, or seen something before.” Griffon looks thoughtful. “But that doesn’t seem to cover it most of the time.”

“It doesn’t,” I agree. “It’s more than that. It’s not like I’ve just seen it already. It’s like I’ve…” I suddenly realize that I’m sitting here spilling my guts to a total stranger. A total stranger who feels really familiar.

“Like you’ve lived it before?” Griffon finishes for me.

“Right,” I say. I’m surprisingly calm. “Like I’m seeing things that already happened through the eyes of the people they happened to. Things that happened a long time ago. I don’t know if it’s spirits, or some kind of supernatural energy.” I pause, and it’s as if the thread that momentarily connected us has snapped. “Or if I’m going crazy.”

Griffon smiles. “You’re not crazy,” he says. “Far from it.”

“So if I’m not slowly going insane, what is it, then?”

He hesitates, and I can see indecision play across his face. “I guess people sometimes try to bury the things that they most need to see.”

“And for some reason I need to see these glimpses of other people’s lives? That makes no sense.”

“Maybe it will someday,” he says cryptically.

I look at our hands on the wooden table. Our fingers are only inches apart, and I have a sudden urge to reach out and touch him. I want the feel of his skin on mine, a physical connection, even if it’s only for a second. As if he can read my mind, Griffon pulls his
hands from the table and sits back in his chair. I feel as embarrassed as if I had actually reached for him.

Griffon looks out toward the Green, where the other tourists are wandering around. “So what do you think of the new marker for the scaffold site?” he asks, nodding toward the Chapel.

I follow his gaze, thrown by the rapid change in topic. “That glass thing? It’s interesting.”

Griffon’s face clouds over a little. His emotions seem to be just under the surface, and I can already see the dislike in his expression. “I think it’s awful. Like a big glass coffee table right in the middle of the square.”

I smile. “I kind of thought the same thing.”

“The worst part is that they didn’t even put it in the right spot,” he says.

“They didn’t? I thought that’s where all the executions happened. That’s what the guidebook says.”

“No,” he says. “Don’t believe everything you read. Years ago some Warder just pointed to that spot when Queen Victoria came for a visit and asked where the beheadings took place. Poor old guy didn’t have a clue. The Yeoman Warders just go along with it so the tourists don’t get confused. It’s tradition.”

“So where did they really happen?” I ask, glad that we seemed to be having a normal conversation again. Living right on top of it all, he must know all the dirty little secrets.

“Well, the scaffolds were put up and taken down for every execution, so they weren’t always in the same spot. Actually,” he says, “most of the beheadings happened on the north side of the White Tower.”

“Which side is that?” I ask.

“Near where they keep the Crown Jewels now,” he says. “In fact, they say that the most famous executions happened near the Green.” Griffon leans forward and studies me. “Right on the spot where you fainted.”

Spring break feels a million miles away as Ms. Lipke’s marker squeaks across the whiteboard at the front of the room. Rayne slides into her seat, glancing up first to see if she’s going to get busted for being late to class again. “So what’s he like?” she whispers.

“Who?” I ask quietly, knowing exactly who she means. It’s pretty impossible to keep anything from her. I’d purposely left Griffon out of my updates while we were gone, but I should have known that Kat would go telling everyone. I’ve spent enough time analyzing my entire conversation with him, and I don’t want to have to go over it with Rayne too. Griffon is a part of the trip that I want to keep to myself. At least for now.

“Kat told Sienna that you two met some amazing guys in London. I can’t believe you’ve been back two whole days and didn’t say anything.”

The minute Griffon told me about the executions, I felt sick all over again. As soon as Kat showed up I made excuses about jet lag and practically ran out of there. He didn’t even ask for my number, and it’s not like I was going to shove it in his hand. And now we’re back home and in school as if everything is the same. Even though everything feels completely different.

“Come on,” Rayne urges, facing forward so we won’t get caught talking. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about something so important. Spill.”

“Nothing to spill,” I say. “I met a guy. He was cute. He didn’t get my info, so I’ll never see him again. End of story.”

“That’s not what Kat says. She says you, like, totally fainted right in the middle of some tower and that this guy rescued you.”

Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. Sometimes, when I’m doing the most random thing, a scene from that vision will flash through my mind, and all of the same emotions get churned up all over again. At least nothing like that has happened since we’ve been back. Hopefully that was the worst—and the last—of whatever it was, and the visions stayed in England where they belong. “It was just a cup of tea,” I say. “Hardly qualifies as ‘
rescuing
.’” Ms. Lipke gives us both a look, saving me from having to explain any more for the moment.

It’s ridiculous how much I think about Griffon, considering we’d probably spent all of an hour together. Even though we’d only had one more day in London, I was tempted to try to get back to the Tower, visions of beheadings or not. We passed the Tower walls in a cab the next day and I pictured him sitting at a table in the café, probably talking to some other hapless tourist girl who needed his assistance.